


XOXO Murdoc

by katikat



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen, Obsession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-02-01 23:36:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12715164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katikat/pseuds/katikat
Summary: A lock of hair, a bouquet of flowers - and a clean headshot. Jack’s POV. (Unbeta'd)





	XOXO Murdoc

_Finally!_  Jack thought this day would never end. Crawling through sewers - pardon, a  _drainage system_  - getting muck all over himself, his clothes and,  _God_ , it’s even squishing in his shoes!

But now that he dropped Mac off at home - for once, getting their hands dirty,  _literally_ , meant the clean-up was not up to them, a blessing! - Jack can finally relax, take a long and very hot shower - and  _burn his clothes_! He picks up his mail and slowly, tiredly he drags himself up the stairs to his apartment.

He’s so happy that for this job, they didn’t actually have to trudge across the country or, God forbid, across the ocean. This time, all they had to do was pull out the spoiled brat of the governor’s grandson - or was it his  _godson_? Jack’s not entirely sure, by that point he was knee deep in unmentionable things and he really didn’t care - out of the drainage system downtown that the idiot decided to  _explore_ on a dare from his drunk buddies and where he got stuck after a flash flood, following a big storm that hit LA earlier that day. Dumb bastard!

Unlocking his door, Jack walks into his apartment and drops his bag on the floor and his mail on the table as he makes a beeline for the shower. Everything will have to wait until he actually feels like a human being again.  _Yuck!_

His long hot shower is cut short, though, when the boiler once again starts making that unholy clanking noise, which meant that Jack’s landlord still hasn’t bothered to fix the damn thing. With a sigh, Jack scrubs quickly, using what lukewarm water there is. He should’ve stayed at Mac’s and used the shower in Bozer’s bedroom, like Mac suggested, since Bozer was saddled with the clean-up at the scene and he won’t be home for hours.  _Oh well…_

Feeling marginally less like a sewer rat, Jack puts on clean -  _clean!_ \- clothes and decides that coffee’s in order, good and strong - and  _hot_! At least his coffee will be hot, if not his shower. Small blessings and all that jazz.

But on his way to the kitchen, Jack glances at the pile of mail in passing and something catches his attention. The envelope on top, it has no address, no stamp, there’s nothing but one word written on it in big, blocky letters:  _JACK._

Frowning, Jack stops at the table and picks it up. He can feel something inside. It’s soft and small, definitely no wires, definitely not a bomb or anything like that. So, he tears the envelope open and shakes the thing out, onto his palm. And he freezes, his eyes going wide.

It’s a lock of hair, short and blond, the same shade as…

Quickly, Jack looks inside the envelope and there’s something else in it, a piece of paper. With his heart hammering like crazy, he pulls it out and unfolds it, and when he reads the text, handwritten with a blue pen, his breath catches in his throat.

“Oh, Jack,” the note reads, “not the best bodyguard, are you?”

The lock of hair, it’s  _Mac’s_! And the note…

_Murdoc!_

* * *

On his way back to Mac’s, Jack violates pretty much every traffic rule there is and it still takes him way too long to get there, at least that’s how it feels to him. Because Mac’s not picking up his phone. His cellphone his off completely and his landline just keeps ringing and ringing.  _Jesus._

He barges inside Mac’s house with his gun drawn, a litany of  _“not again, please, God, not again!”_ running through his head. He yells Mac’s name, sweeping his gun back and forth, checking every corner, and his heart’s working overtime because he got careless -  _again! -_ and if, as a result, that… that  _psycho_ did something to Mac -  _again!_  - Jack will never, ever forgive himself.

And that’s when Mac walks out of his bedroom, dressed in a ratty old t-shirt and sweats, carrying a towel in his hand, and with a bewildered look on his face, he asks, “Jack? What are you doing here? What’s going on?”

And Jack just folds. He almost runs up to Mac and he hugs his friend hard, he almost knocks Mac over in his haste and he hangs onto him for dear life. “You’re okay. You’re here. You’re fine…” he mumbles over and over again.

“Yeah?” Mac drawls, just standing there, utterly confused. “Jack, what–”

“Just give me a second, okay?” Jack whispers with his eyes closed as he waits for his heart to climb down from a borderline heart attack. “Just a sec…”

Mac relaxes and lifts his free hand to pat Jack on the back. “Alright. Whatever it is, Jack, it’s alright.”

After a moment, Jack pushes Mac back and holds him at an arm’s length while he studies him closely. Mac just stares back at him, with his eyebrows raised. Then, Jack shakes him sharply and yells, “Why the hell didn’t you pick up your phone?”

Blinking, Mac reminds him reasonably, “My cellphone’s dead. I turned it into a makeshift sonar, down at the scene, remember? And if you called the landline, well, I was  _in the shower_. I couldn’t get the muck off me, I think I  _still_ reek of it!”

Jack drops his head and lets out a deep breath. “Jesus…” he whispers.

“Jack?” Mac asks, uncertain. “What happened?”

Sighing, Jack straightens up and returns his gun back to its holster. Then he reaches into his back pocket and hands the envelope over to Mac. “I found this in my mail. It must’ve arrived after I left for work today because I checked my mailbox this morning and it wasn’t there. And I thought–” He breaks off.

With a frown, Mac opens the envelope and pulls out the note and the lock of blond hair. “That’s mine!” he notices, stunned. Then he reaches up and runs his fingers through his wet, uncombed hair, until he finds a shorter spot in the back and shows it to Jack. “But how…?  _Who?_ ”

Jack sneers. “ _Guess_.”

Mac’s eyes open wide. “Murdoc?” he breathes out in disbelief. “But when? I’m no Kardashian but I would’ve noticed a chunk of my hair missing this morning!”

“I don’t know!” Jack shakes his head. “It could’ve happened at the site, during the rescue mission? There was a lot of people just milling around, pushing and shoving, and we were focused on getting that idiot out so we didn’t pay much attention to what was going around.”

“But why? I don’t get why he would do something like this?” Mac says, looking down at the lock of his hair, rubbing it between his fingers. “What’s the point?”

Jack snorts. “ _The point_? Mac! Maybe you haven’t noticed but that guy’s pretty obsessed with you. That time he kidnapped you, he used you to get to his target, sure, but don’t tell me he didn’t get off on torturing you. Or that making your life miserable didn’t turn into some sick hobby for him.”

Mac’s life and everyone else’s around him, too, Jack thinks, because Murdoc recognizes a weak spot when he sees it. And he knows that Mac’s weakness are his friends.

Rubbing his face hard, Jack mumbles, “Jesus! He must’ve been so close. So close! And I didn’t notice.”

“Jack,” Mac says kindly, “don’t beat yourself up. I didn’t notice him either and it was  _my hair_ he snipped!”

“But it’s not  _your job_ , Mac!” Jack protests, glaring at his friend. He’s not really angry with Mac. He’s worried about him - and he’s furious with himself. “ _Your job_ is to come up with mad-hatter solutions to problems that would leave the rest of us stumped.  _My job_  is to watch your back while you do it, to make sure madmen like Murdoc don’t get anywhere  _near_ you, let alone so close they can just snip a lock of your hair!” He ends his tirade on a shout, without even realizing it.

“Jack–” Mac tries again but he’s interrupted by a knock on the door. Frowning, he turns to go and open it, but Jack stops him with a frown and a raised hand, and pulling his gun out of its holster, he goes and opens it himself.

There’s a young boy standing there, pimpled and bright-eyed and with a big bouquet in his hands. “Flowers for… Angus MacGyver?” he asks uncertainly, noticing Jack’s fierce expression.

Jack scans the surroundings - the sun has set and twilight’s crept in while he was inside - but there’s no one else there but the delivery guy and his little truck, puffing at the curb. He hides his gun and grabs the flowers. “Yeah,” he says and slams the door shut in the poor boy’s startled face.

“Who was it?” Mac asks. He came closer and his bare feet were so silent on the hardwood floor that Jack didn’t even notice him.

“You got flowers,” Jack informs Mac suspiciously, turning the bouquet this way and that, as if it might explode in his hands.

“Me?” Mac asks, surprised. Then he pulls out the card from the greenery, and opening it, he reads the content aloud, “This afternoon was fun. Thank you for allowing me to finish my job. See you soon. XOXO…  _Murdoc_.”

Gritting his teeth furiously, Jack turns on his heel, throws the door open and chucks the bouquet out before slamming the door shut again. “What a damn  _creep_!” he mutters, rubbing his hands against his thighs, because even touching those flowers made him feel dirty.

But Mac’s still looking down at the card, a pensive frown his only reaction. “What do you think he meant by that, ‘finish my job’?” he asks Jack, looking up.

Jack opens his mouth to snap that he doesn’t care, that he just wants this guy run over by a truck or something,  _anything_ that would get the nutjob out of their lives once and for all. Before he can say it, though, his phone rings and picks it up, barking, “ _What?!_ ”

When he hears who’s on the other end of the line, though, he dials down his anger a notch. “Sorry, Matty. We have a little bit of a situation here,” he says and puts her on speaker.

“Well, we have ‘a little bit of a situation’ here, too, Jack!” Matty retorts, just as annoyed. “John Liebowitz? The guy you pulled out of the drainage system this afternoon? He’s dead.”

Mac and Jack exchange looks.

“What happened?” Mac asks, the card in his hand forgotten for the moment.

If Matty’s surprised to hear Mac’s voice, she doesn’t show it. “Someone shot him while he was leaving the hospital,” she informs them. “A clean headshot from  _at least_ two hundred yards away. It was a professional hit. Whoever did it, must’ve followed the rescue operation closely if they knew when and where to pick him off like that. Cops are looking into it but they don’t think it’s connected to–”

“Oh, it’s connected alright,” Jack interrupts her, his voice dripping with sarcasm, as both he and Mac look down at the card in Mac’s hand.

_…This afternoon was fun. Thank you for allowing me to finish my job. See you soon…_

There’s a pause, then Matty asks suspiciously, “Jack? What aren’t you two telling me?”

Sighing, Mac rubs his forehead. “Matty, I think it would be best if we explained everything at the office?”

Another pause, heavy with suspicion. “Be here in an hour,” Matty orders in the end and hangs up.

“Well, isn’t that just fantastic!” Jack grumbles, annoyed.

Mac sets the card down and stares at it for a moment. “Yeah,” he says quietly.

Jack frowns. “Hey, this is not your fault, you know that, right?” he states firmly. “Murdoc was hired to kill that Lieb-whatever dude before the fool went and got stuck in the sewers. If we hadn’t saved him, he would’ve drowned and saved Murdoc a bullet, that’s all. And if he hadn’t gone down there in the first place, Murdoc would’ve simply shot him this morning already.

“Mac, his death had nothing to do with us - with  _you_!” he insists. Sure, he feels lousy about the whole thing, too - the guy was a spoiled man-child but he didn’t deserve to be murdered in cold blood - but to see Mac so dejected… well, that Jack simply cannot take.

“Right,” Mac replies quietly, obviously unconvinced. “I’ll just… I’ll get changed and then we can go.” And with that, he turns and walks away, down the hallway and towards his bedroom, his footsteps heavy.

“Fuck!” Jack curses softly, ready to tear that murdering psycho apart with bare hands. For a madman, the guy certainly knows what buttons to push!

_… XOXO Murdoc…_

“Fuck…”


End file.
